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Closed 10 years ago.
I want to learn how to use core-animation for the iPhone in a more serious manner; instead of just ripping other people's code to move a box a few pixels, I want to be able to write that code myself, and engage in translation, transformation, and other things with an understanding of the code I'm using to achieve it.
Unfortunately, the online documentation is, at best, rather dense. And while I have a good book for general iPhone programming, coreAnimation is a very large, complex area and it doesn't cover it in any real depth. Are there any good books that cover the subject?
Try Bill Dudney's Core Animation for Mac OSX and iPhone. The book does a fine job of walking through a lot of CA -- not all of which is available in the iPhone (yet?)
See also #neror's CA git project for good examples. #neror updates the project frequently and is a solid learning resource.
I have personally read "Core Animation: Simplified Animation Techniques for Mac and iPhone Development". This is a colorful book and quite easy to follow. This book assumes that you have some iPhone programming knowledge, so you will also need your general iPhone programming book. This book covers topics such as basic animation, path, what can be animated. The author would present you some code fragments, illustrating their ideas.
I would like to give you another suggestion.
You are asking for a good reference book about Core Animation. As mentioned above, I recommend "Core Animation: Simplified Animation Techniques for Mac and iPhone Development". However, in my experience, the book and other books on Core Animation aren't sufficient. None of the CA book is very well-written, I would rate them about 6 to 7 out of 10. Your best bet is learn from a concrete open source project. I recommend you GeekGameBoard from Apple. GeekGameBoard has two versions, the Apple version is written for MacOSX. There is a modified version for iPhone, check http://jens.mooseyard.com/2008/03/geekgameboard-getting-closer-to-iphone-ready/. Personally, I studied the source while refreshing my understanding from the book.
Related
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Closed 11 years ago.
I am looking for a good well designed iOS code/framework that is open sourced out there that I can study on. What I mean good design is, they follow good object oriented concepts, code is clean, and organized, possibly has some unit testing in it as well. I wanted to learn these concepts and apply it to my projects as well. Any suggestions are appreciated
Apple provides some great sample code.
Additionally, I suggest looking at the abundance of iOS code available on code sharing sites such as GitHub. There's some great work done by some StackOverflow members. Marcus Zarra and Dave DeLong are two such people. I've also posted some code up there as well. Just so you know, a lot of code posted on GitHub are not complete projects, but libraries or useful classes.
There's also the Three20 framework, published by Facebook.
At risk of shameless self plugging, here's a project I wrote that's overly commented and fairly simple. The app is a "speed dial" for iPhone. Set a number, flip a switch and you don't need to jump into the phone app to tap on a number in favorites anymore. One tap dialing right from your home screen. I've got two apps based on this code that are out on the App Store, but this app itself is not.
Edit:
Since writing this answer I've got some more project, much more complex than the one linked above. MBCalendarKit is the one I'm most proud of. Feel free to tear it up.
I think Apple makes good code sample codes.
three20
http://three20.info/
Put together by facebook.
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Closed 10 years ago.
I have started learning Objective C with no prior programming experience from the 'Become an X-Coder' eBook (http://download.cocoalab.com.s3.amazonaws.com/BecomeAnXcoder.pdf). My question is, if I want to be doing iPhone development, am I going in the right direction? Am I learning the wrong language, or should I be learning Cocoa Touch? As I said, I have no prior experience, and just need someone to point me in the right direction. Apoligies if I have put this in the wrong place. Thanks very much for your time.
The short answer is that Cocoa Touch is Objective-C. And now for the long answer...
Objective-C is the essence of Cocoa Touch, which refers to the frameworks which are built by Apple for iOS development. So basically, if you are learning Objective-C, you are learning part of Cocoa Touch. Cocoa touch refers specifically to the code libraries and frameworks written for the iPhone and iPad.
If you are starting out, you may want to learn C and then Objective-C. However, it's totally up to you. It may be helpful to know C, but not required.
If you decide to go with Objective-C as a first language, I recommend getting some books on the Objective-C language as well as some books on iOS development. I have read Head First iPhone Development (O'Reilly)Amazon | Google and Sams Teach Yourself iPhone Development in 24 hours (Amazon). Someone recommended looking into a publisher called Apress, but I haven't yet. There are also some great blogs to look at once you you get started. Matt Gallagher's Cocoa with Love is not a beginners blog, but it has some nice information there.
Finally, feel free to ask specific questions here on Stackoverflow and don't forget to use Google.
Good luck!
Personally, I started with Beginning iPhone Development by Jeff LaMarche. I liked the pace of the book and there were great relevant notes throughout the text as you went through sample projects.
After I felt a bit more comfortable with the language/platform, I dove into the three20 project. There's something super satisfying about being able to load up complex UI components, which three20 let's you do fairly easily. Plus, I found it a great way to find patterns on writing Objective-C.
Finally, I'd subscribe to a few Objective-C/iPhone blogs. Here are some that I read:
Able Pear: http://blog.ablepear.com/
Cocoanetics: http://www.cocoanetics.com/blog/
iPhone Programming Tutorial: http://icodeblog.com/
iDev Recipes: http://idevrecipes.com/ (really great idea)
Marco: http://www.marco.org/
Ole Begemann: http://oleb.net/
Ray Wenderlich: http://www.raywenderlich.com/
Jeff LaMarche: http://iphonedevelopment.blogspot.com/
Wish you the best of luck!
Objective-C is the place to start. I would suggest Programming in Objective-C by Kochan and then move to iPhone Programming The Big Nerd Ranch Guide by Conway and Hillegass. As mentioned by others, I wouldn't start with C... Go Objective-C then a focus on iOS.
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Closed 11 years ago.
What the best books available right now on Mac and iPhone development ?
Thanks
Michael
These two books were good:
iPhone SDK Application
Development
iPhone In Action
The Apple online docs are actually pretty good too:
http://developer.apple.com/iphone/
I'd stay away from this one, I didn't think it was very good:
Programming in Objective C
You might want to consider some of these: http://cocoaheads.byu.edu/resources/book
In this order:
Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X (The Bible)
Beginning iPhone Development (Long-winded but great for beginners)
iPhone SDK Development (Starts nicely, but gets a little too deep too fast. Still in beta)
Programming in Objective-C (Only down so far because I couldn't get through the first few chapters. Recommended by many, good for total programming beginners)
iPhone Cookbook (Full of mistakes, but good for learning stuff closer to the code)
iPhone in Action (I didn't learn anything from this book. Might be good for programming for Mobile Safari)
Learning Cocoa with Objective-C (Avoid)
This is mainly an iPhone list, but several are more general books.
The iPhone SDK Development looks very nice. I did not read it, but read a lot promising about it on the blog of one of the authors, Chris Adamson. The blog itself is very good reading for everybody interested in iPhone sound programming.
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Closed 11 years ago.
I am trying to decide between:
OpenFeint - http://www.openfeint.com/developers
Agon - http://developer.agon-online.com
ScoreLoop - http://corporate.scoreloop.com/features
All of the websites look clean. I don't know how many users they have but ScoreLoop has some recognizable games using the service.
Have you tried any of these platforms? Which is best?
Open Feint has some of the most well known apps as cross-promotions. Open Feint has a nice Objective-C API, matching Cocoa Touch.
Agonn has not as many apps for cross promotion, but are growing fast. Agon uses a C based API.
I Have no personal experience of ScoreLoop. But I understand that it allows much better UI customization than the other, making it easier to make the leader boards an integrated part of your game.
I just started experimenting with ScoreLoop, and so far I really like it. Integrating it into my cocos2d based game was pretty straightforward (just following the Getting Started document). It looks like there's a lot of room for UI customization, but I haven't really had a chance to play with this yet.
As far as I understand it, one of the differences between ScoreLoop and similar services is that in ScoreLoop, challenges are a central concept. So if your game can use challenges (mine will), this might be a good choice. It doesn't support chat, though. If you want more social networking features, OpenFeint might be worth a look.
I haven't personally tried any of these but Cocos2d also has a high-score framework built in.
I have good experience with OpenFeint. The developers were responsive to all my questions and helped me work around a few limitations.
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Closed 10 years ago.
Are there any open source, CoverFlow-like APIs or libraries available for the iPhone?
I've found one implementation that is licensed per application, however, I'd much prefer to go the open source route.
Also, I'm interested in libraries that use only public APIs, as using non-public APIs might keep an app from getting published in the App Store.
You might also want to check out a library I released at iPhoneDevCamp -- OpenFlow.
http://apparentlogic.com/openflow
It is all core animation-based, so it's easy to understand and customize to your needs. AFOpenFlowView is a subclass of UIView.
I included a demo application, and check out the blog entry on my personal website for a bit more information about its use. fajkowski.com
Drop me a line if you have any questions or comments!
-Alex
There's another nice Open Source implementation by demosthenese. Here's the link.
The nice people at Chaosinmotion have got the following available:
http://www.chaosinmotion.com/flowcover.html
It's BSD licensed.
The last chapter on Erica Sadun's The iPhone Developer's Cookbook is about Cover Flow.
You can grab the source code from the sample repository of the book on Google Code:
cookbooksamples
I am not aware of any open-source libraries for what you describe above. However, if you are familiar with core animation, it wouldn't be too hard to implement what you describe.
Check out the links below for some more information:
Blog post about implementing coverflow using core animation
Core animation reference guide from Apple iPhone Dec Center
The book "SAMS Teach Yourself Cocoa Touch Programming in 24 Hours" shows you how to make your own in the CoreAnimation chapter (complete implementation).